Apparently the moratorium on Spanish companies buying American Internet companies has expired. In the wake of Terra's awful purchase of Lycos, cross-border activity died down for a while. Today, though, there are reports that a second-tier American Internet property is about to bamboozle another naive Spanish telecom company.
A Spanish newspaper reported that mobile entertainment company LaNetro Zed is about to pay $1 billion for mobile information provider InfoSpace. While this may be too high a price, it can't be nearly as bad as Terra's deal. In 2000, Terra announced its plans to purchase Lycos for $12.6 billion. By the time the deal closed a few months later, its value had declined to $5.4 billion. Four years later, Terra sold Lycos.com to a Korean company for $95 million. Ouch.
For more on the reported talks between LaNetro Zed and InfoSpace, see:
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Eric Savitz
Technorati tags: infospace, lycos, m&a
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